I have loved a ton of games over the years in a variety of genres. Picking one favorite in all that time is nearly impossible to me.
But... in terms of sheer impact on the course of my life and work, often the earliest ones seem to be the most influential and impactful.
Maybe it is the nostalgic aspect, the fact that I was such an ardent game-player in childhood, or the fact that in the early years (1990s) the field was truly new... but when you look back at that decade in retrospect, you can see so many things coalescing and establishing norms for the first time, the first MMOs, the first FPS and multiplayer FPS, RTSs, simulation games, a whole host of genres taking shape and form, and a degree of experimentation suddenly emerging that is now only really seen in indie games. You could see a real revolution occuring in 3d graphics - prerendered first, then the advent of early realtime 3d.
Nowadays, of course, it is far trickier to push graphics forward, you have games like GTA V that cost over a quarter of a billion dollars to make. And that has resulted in a sort of Hollywoodization of gaming, tons of polish but proportionally fewer brand new IPs, lots of sequels, high development cost per game and therefore fear of taking really major risks outside of the indie scene. Not to say experimentation's gone, it isn't at all, but there is a disconnect between 'indie' and 'AAA' now. Back then, every studio was small, every game was made on a budget that today would be considered indie. Look at the original 'SimCity', at the start of the '90s, essentially designed solely by Will Wright. Or 'Civilization' by Sid Meier. These were one-person operations. Indie.
Then in '93, two competing visions for the future of gaming by two little teams, changed everything (yet again).
Doom - the first multiplayer FPS, with a fast, fun rapid fire game design and (crude looking) early realtime 3d levels. The choice of dynamism and excitement.
Myst - everything Doom wasn't, basically. Slow paced, super detailed but also sort of static (prerendered visuals) because realtime games then couldn't hold much detailing at all. Myst demanded careful observation to complete, it was puzzle based, exploration based and told most of its story through its intricately designed game worlds.
Between these two, the seeds for today's plethora of great games were formed. The realtime 3d format, with all its freedom of motion, yet with the attention to detail and visual realism and imagination of Myst.
And I felt like, at the time, as a child, aspects of both were going to change everything. And actually, they did. Now we have these vast, freely explorable open worlds, incredible attention to details, all of that merged together.
So that was me as a kid. I came out of Myst and its sequels absolutely entranced by the aesthetics and the sheer audacious skillfullness with which the worlds were made... watching to see when realtime 3d would be able to match that level of detail and richness and depth. By the mid-late 2000s, we were unquestionably arriving there.
Today? I am past college, past some failed career efforts working for others, but am now setting off on my own, an indie game dev, with my strongest area of skill being in the field of 3d art and animation.
I also do some video production and VFX stuff, traditional art and handcrafted miniatures, etc, and a lot of that is being mixed in various ways to make games that look hand painted or hand drawn, games made with realistic 3d art, games even made with O scale miniature art. I have a lot in the pipeline and it is moving forward and this couldn't make me happier.
So in retrospect, the range of emergent early games may look like utter garbage by modern standards. Fine. But that old wild west of the early games industry, from Simcity to Civ, Civ 2, to Doom, Myst and Riven, Half-Life, Age of Empires, Starcraft, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc, that era is what showed me the sheer potential of the gaming field. It was that timeframe that made it clear that someday I would want to do 'this'. Because there I saw a massive, diverse wave of innovation of the sort that only is possible in the stumbling nascent years of a new art form.
I am thrilled by everything that has developed since then. Many of the games you all have mentioned were touchstones to me as well. When I explored the art-deco city of Rapture for the first time in 'Bioshock' or the overgrown Aperture Labs in Portal 2 or the desolate yet beautiful sands of Journey, or the dystopian City 17 in Half Life 2, the sense of lingering dread and existential horror in 'Soma', and a multitude of other experiences of various types... each giving me a sense of place and history and the experience of being transported and immersed in a world that was truly new and fascinating. I may be starting small, but someday I would love to evoke that sense of awe and mystery and enchantment myself, with a story and a world of my own.
That is my goal. That is where I am heading, or at least trying to someday go.
But right now, a lot of work needs to be done first. I still have a lot to learn and much still to do.
-Matthew Lyles Hornbostel, https://matthornb.itch.io/